political, and moral state. The allusion would be entire if an old
Arab could be supposed to possess all the erudition, all the European
philosophy, which are found united and in their maturity in a traveller
of twenty-five.

But though a master in all those artifices by which a narration is
rendered interesting, the young man is not to be discerned in the pomp
of labored descriptions. Although possessed of a lively and brilliant
imagination, he is never found unwarily explaining by conjectural
systems the physical or moral phenomena he describes. In his
observations he unites prudence with science. With these two guides he
judges with circumspection, and sometimes confesses himself unable to
account for the effects he has made known to us.

Thus his account has all the qualities that persuade--accuracy
and candor. And when, ten years later, a vast military enterprise
transported forty thousand travellers to the classic ground, which he
had trod unattended, unarmed and unprotected, they all recognized a sure
guide and an enlightened observer in the writer who had, as it seemed,
only preceded them to remove or point out a part of the difficulties of
the way.

The unanimous testimony of all parties proved the accuracy of his
account and the justness of his observations; and his Travels in Egypt
and Syria were, by universal suffrage, recommended to the gratitude and
the confidence of the public.

Before the work had undergone this trial it had obtained in the learned
world such a rapid and general success, that it found its way into
Russia. The empress, then (in 1787) upon the throne, sent the author